Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11524.33 | Fiction literature | 2 February 2011
2
The Burglar in the Closet
It's hard to ignore someone with his hands in your mouth. Bernie Rhodenbarr's all ears when Dr. Sheldrake, his dentist, starts complaining about his detestable, soon-to-be-ex wife, and happens to mention the valuable diamonds she keeps lying around the apartment. Since Bernie's been known to supplement his income as a bookstore owner with the not-so-occasional bout of high-rise burglary, a couple of nights later he's in the Sheldrake apartment with larceny on his mind -- and has to duck into a closet when the lady of the house makes an unexpected entrance.
What's Bernie Rhodenbarr doing in the country? He is a New York kind of guy, an urbane antiquarian bookseller who moonlights as a buttoned down burglar. Until an impossibly rare Raymond Chandler novel dedicated to Dashiell Hammett lures him and his buddy, Carolyn, from their own turf to the hills of Western Massachusetts. Before they knows it, they're smack in the middle of Agatha Christie country and you know what that means. A classic English country house. A guest list awash in eccentricity. And the snow keeps falling. And the bridge is out. And the phone lines are cut. And, one by one, somebody's killing off the guests. And....shhhh! There's a burglar in the library!
For nearly a year Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone straight...well of a fashion. But Bernie has a new landlord for his Greenwich Village bookstore - Bernie Stoppelagard - not a nice man, who wants to increase his rent by 10,000 dollars...a month! Desperate times call for desperate measures. So Bernie is back to work burgling an apartment of a couple on a European tour of untraceable cash. There is only one problem - the naked man in the bathroom - and the fact that he is deceased.
In his latest caper, Bernie must come up with a priceless Mondrian as ransom for his friend's kidnapped cat--and finds himself entangled in a web of murder, deception, and unexpected passion....
